Title: Virtual manufacturing of milling operations with multiple tool paths

Authors: Dusan N. Sormaz, Deepak V. Pisipati, Prashant A. Borse

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Ohio University, 277 Stocker Center, Athens, OH 45701–2979, USA. ' SCK, 2221 Professor Avenue, Cleveland OH, 44113–3634, USA. ' GCAS Inc., 1561 Grand Avenue, Suite A, San Marcos, CA 92069, USA

Abstract: Virtual manufacturing (visualisation and animation of a manufacturing process) provides the user with visual feed back in order to understand relations between the data in the process plan. The paper presents a framework, a procedure and an object-oriented prototype for virtual manufacturing of milling processes. A visualisation model is generated through three steps: geometric model, kinematic model and animation model. In the first step, geometric model, the feature geometry is analysed and corresponding tool path patterns are generated, and initial and final work piece geometry computed using stock and feature geometric models. Kinematic model is generated by segmentation of end milling processing time into intervals for each tool path segment and identification of part/tool engagement and disengagement relations. The third step, animation model, creates objects necessary for virtual manufacturing of the process in virtual 3D world. The user-friendly prototype has been implemented in Java using Java3d API. The user is able to experiment with different values of the tool path parameters and visually inspect results in order to select the most suitable ones.

Keywords: process planning; process visualisation; NC verification; computer-aided manufacturing; CAM; virtual reality; Java3d; multiple tool paths; virtual manufacturing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMTM.2006.010057

International Journal of Manufacturing Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.9 No.3/4, pp.237 - 264

Published online: 14 Jun 2006 *

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